Jock Richardson

It will be clear, from what has gone before, that our experience of San Isidro 2023 has not been perfect: too much rain; unsympathetic audiences, presidents who refuse to agree with the wishes of that part of the audience that is not running out for another G and T as soon as the dead bull drops. Fortunately, it is not all bad. On 31 May, three men from lower than the top rank of matadors took on six bulls of Santiago Domecq – and the sun shone. The bulls – a mixture of Juan Pedro, Núñez and Torrestrella blood – were the most impressive element in the afternoon, but the ways Arturo Saldívar, Fernando Adrián and Álvaro Lorenzo dealt with the problems served up by the bravery, fixity, strength, seriousness, and aggression of their adversaries were captivating also.

Saldívar is not inexperienced and has enjoyed successes in Mexico and Spain. He has not been in Las Ventas for eight years and it is possible that meeting that rara avis, a genuine toro de lidia, was too sudden a change for him. To his credit, he was dedicated to his work, brave in his attempts to bring his bulls under control and create toreo. His first caught him as soon as he opened his cape and gave him a dreadful thumping; he answered with a series of brave and beautiful chicuelinas. The bull was overflowing with character, and it looked as if Saldívar did not fully understand it. Nevertheless, his commitment was exemplary, and he once edged into the danger zone, eschewed the pico and the straight line and showed how beautiful his toreo can be. Things improved with the fourth bull. The faena blossomed as he came to terms with the wise character of the bull. He moved from the early enganchados derechazos and naturales to closely linked series of depth, length, and growing security. He killed the bull at the right time with a great estocada. The good people of Madrid did not indicate that they had noticed either the interesting bull or intelligent matador.

Fernando Adrián is 31 years old and tends to torear bulls from lesser known ganaderías in plazas of lower category than Madrid. Today, he met two bulls of undeniable breeding, nobility, and strength – his second un toro de bandera - and reached the summit of toreo. The first, billed as cárdeno claro, was a beautiful animal of varied accidentals. Full of enthusiasm, Adrián welcomed it with largas cambiadas de rodillas and proceeded in a Herculean struggle with its quick-turning charges and scything horns to bring it to his will and create series of orthodox passes. He exposed himself selflessly to stimulate the charges and applied himself to the task with courage and enthusiasm. At the end, he entered like a rocket to place his low sword. “That bull is far too big,” said my compañera as the 599 Kg ‘Contento’ entered the ring. She had forgotten the “No hay quinto malo” adage. This bull was big, no doubt; it was mighty in its qualities as a toro de lidia. Honest, steadily charging with the head low, strong, enduring, and for all its size, handsome, it joined with Adrián to give us the most impressive faena we have seen so far. The lad started once more on his knees – with a collection of seven derechazos and naturales - but was soon on his feet and into toreo puro mode. The pases were long, complete, linked and templados, the canones obeyed in every move, the bull rested appropriately, and man and bull mutually elevated to the summit of taurine greatness. He killed with a metisaca and an estocada, and cut his second ear of the afternoon. The bull had taken a while to drop – it was supremely brave. How appropriate was the applause Fernando Adrián gave it as it held on to life!

It was strange to see Álvaro Lorenzo third on the cartel: he is 27 years old and seems to have been around for years. The bull took two pics and cooperated well in banderillas, so hopes were raised. Lorenzo did execute some complete series midst his ragged experimentation that conveyed the impression that he was not fully understanding the bull’s complexities – they were many - and rising to the solution of them. That he gave his all in his effort was undeniable. Perhaps spurred on by what had gone before, he worked even harder with the sixth. It was no easier, despite its nobility, than had been the third. Lorenzo was caught early in the faena which seemed to spur him on the more. It was when he went to the left hand and built series of clean, pure, and perfect linked naturales that the faena soared. There was a chest pass made in heaven to end a compact work in which intelligence combined with artistry to create beauty. He killed with an estocada and even the most miserly could have denied him an ear – Sr Rodríguez (in the palco today) is a miser and left Álvaro to limp around the arena with nothing but deserved praise.

The rain came back on 1 June and so did the ambulatory hordes travelling from seats to wherever they go. We have seen over 2,500 corridas and have never – other on the very few occasions we have been ill – felt like leaving our seats. This was a corrida of Alcurrucén Núñez bulls, in. the main noble mansos of little character. It was in a strange way a fun afternoon and an impressive corrida. We watched three styles of toreo framed in spaces between umbrellas (we spend most of our mornings looking at pictures in galleries): the classical, mathematical, precise, honourable, toreo puro of Diego Urdiales; the casual, inventive, pretty, telegraph-pole stillness of Alejandro Talavante; the complete, powerful, intelligent, firm and largely classical masterful toreo of Daniel Luque. These men can make the fighting of oxen impressive.

Urdiales approached his first, aquerenciado in 6, with the stride of a racing driver heading to the start of a race. All he could do with his noble weakling was to extract single classical pases, or short, linked series with either hand. The impression was of a man who could have won the race had his sponsors provided a well-built Ferrari (is that not what Casas promises to provide?) but was destined to crawl round the course with a clapped-out banger. Had not Diego tried his best, it would have been a misery. He killed with an estocada. The fourth bull was a beautifully negro salpicado careto. And there its virtues ended. With a bull that was wildly erratic in its charges, vicious in its cowardly intentions and illidiable in any functional or beautiful way, Urdiales did what was right and dispatched it promptly, smooth, quiet, and serene in his style.

Talavante has seemed to me to be cruising this season. He does some inventive things, often pragmatic and sometimes beautiful, but looks like a man with money already in the bank exercising an outdoors hobby. Today, he was not even inclined to move very far, which was ideal for someone with limited vision through the umbrella screen. Before he decided, correctly, that his first bull had nothing in it worth exploiting, he gave some beautifully casual walking pases por bajo and, later, a similarly pleasing series of stationary pases por bajo; then he killed with an estocada tendida after numerous failed entries. The fifth bull was a much more cooperative protagonist and as the rain streaked down, Talavante walked to its querencia in the tablas of 6, just below us in a gap between the paraguas, sunk to his knees and delivered a series of naturales and a pase cambiado. Then, like a flower in the damp house of a botanic garden, he rose to his feet and treated the audience to a faena of baroque drama. Never moving off the spot, in the latter stages with his feet together, he piled pases of length, depth and linkage, one upon the other, salpicando the work with ornate flourishes and pacing it with dramatic rest phases. It may have been more light-hearted than serious, but it was brave, inventive, and superbly entertaining. Had he killed cleanly, and earlier, he might have won an ear; his praise was resounding.

After the clinician and the magician, all that was needed was an exhibition of powerful, masterful, profound toreo. Daniel Luque’s first bull did not at first seem appropriate for that. Poor in pics and polished in banderillas only by the great work of Iván García and Juan Contreras, it came to the faena with some wet tango claps. Luque provided the magic from the start: a long series of linked pases with his knee to the ground. This powerful start soon had the bull under his control and from then on he built a faena of closely linked derechazos and naturales. He won the bull over and, of course, ended with his own brand of coda: luquesinas from left to right, adorning between the horns to prove his domination, the bull entranced, and the crowd enthused. His estocada was defective, he needed the descabellos, there was an aviso – none of which took away from a great piece of work. Luque’s sixth was a weak manso with wicked intentions; the arena was a sea of mud and there was little to hope for. To his credit, Luque extracted every ounce of pass the bull had in it; some of the pases long, deep, and true. There was to be little of it and he killed with an estocada.

My compañera and I mused on the way to the bus: is it not amazing how an interesting corrida, even if it is in the rain and lasts for nearly two and a half hours, passes without one noticing the weather, the time, or the environment?

If the corrida of 1 June was interesting, so was that of the next day. Once again, we had three toreros with distinct styles: Uceda Leal, a classical, clinical, Castilian torero with a fantastic ability with the sword; Morante de la Puebla, who will be welcomed to the pantheon of great artists when the time comes (let’s hope smoking is not banned), and Sebastièn Castella, carrying the weight of his years and experience with renewed joie de vivre.

The first bull of Uceda Leal charged nobly but with its head high in the wind and rain; he had to bring all his skill to bear to create a brief, compact faena of complete, pure, and, above all, elegantly expressed right and left-handed pases. We have watched this matador here many times from the day of his alternativa in this plaza and never have we seen him step from his elegant, flexible, and intelligent style of toreo. And we have seldom seen him kill badly. He must have been on the threshold of at least one ear: he had to enter to kill six times. His second bull was even more lidiable than had been his first and it put its head down. That’s just as well because it was the most formidably armed of all we have seen this fortnight: huge upwardly sweeping lances narrowing to fearsome tips. it followed Leal’s artistic, templados, precise pases with nobility and strength. He created a faena with all the virtues of his first. Yet again the wait for a great matador to face an exemplary bull had been worthwhile. Memories of rain, paraguas, puddles and wind gusts were blotted out by a majestic piece of work by a man of whom many will never have heard. He entered to kill in his customary style and sunk the sword to the hilt. His ear and his triumph were thoroughly justified.

I tend to assume that the great figuras choose the bulls they are going to torear. It is an assumption made tempting by repeated appearances of figuras with bulls from the same ganaderías. Whether Morante or his representatives chose the two oxen that he faced today, or they were drawn for him in el sorteo, I will never know. That he had to face them was very bad luck indeed. His first, a cowardly weakling, did charge into a series of pure Morante verónicas, which are as delicate, well-formed, and smoothly executed as is humanly possible, but after a brief investigative faena, it was soon killed. His second was mercilessly picced, Morante keeping a directing eye on the butchery. I am inclined to give Morante the benefit of the doubt: a remark in an interview by that other artistic torero who was often accused of being a fraud, Curro Romero, has accompanied me for years, “I never enter the plaza with the intention of defrauding the audience!” Whether Morante’s complicity in the harsh picing was justified or not, it seemed to me that he was eventually trying to extract pases from the bull. His cape work had been convincing, pure Morante, and he seemed to know what was being done with the pic. Moreover, he made several attempts to get more than half charges out of his pathetic adversary. Just or unjust fellow, Morante did not persist for long. He went for the sword and accepted his bronca with the sangfroid we have all become used to.

Our second half of San Isidro ended with the second appearance of Sebastièn Castella. It is strange to see a man with 22 years of alternativa in the middle of the line. Perhaps it is a sign of the times. He faced an erratic manso in third place, a bull that improved for Castella as the lidia progressed. It charged the horse from a huge distance beyond la boca del riego into an encounter that would have been impressive had it not been pure accident. Despite its wild head-waving charges, Castella showed his torería and skill as he built a faena introduced by long and templados kneeling derechazos and unfolded with derechazos and naturales limited only by the so-so nature of the bull and the gusts of wind that contributed to the danger. We were watching a competent torero drawing very little water from an almost dry well. It could not last forever and after an estocada Castella was awarded an ear. He had done well by creating clean and dignified pases from a nondescript animal. He must have wanted to assure his place as triunfador de la feria. But the sixth bull was hardly a bull at all. Nevertheless, Castella welcomed it with a greeting fit for royalty: long, smooth, templados, complete verónicas. The bull retained its power to charge through two firm pics and allowed Viotti to win saludos in banderillas. (These short accounts have not done credit to los peones who have appeared before us in this feria. In brega and banderillas, a legion of great toreros has provided uplifting toreo with self-denying courage.) The deceitful, searching nature of this last bull of the feria was becoming increasingly obvious and, as Castella squeezed single pases out of the halt and wise toro, it warned him several times that it would catch him if it could. It could. Despite Castella toreando de frente and advancing the lure, it managed to breach his defence and catch him in a brutal tossing. Undaunted, he continued, only to be caught again. Finally, he killed with a bajonazo before departing to the enfermería.

We mentioned the fact that we intended to attend the Asociación El Toro de Madrid’s Balance de San Isidro 2013 to a family member on the morning of 5 May. We were given the scathing reply that we would be wasting our time because it was really a press conference and everything in the garden would be declared to be wonderful. I was affronted that a group of hombres exigentes such as the wise members of the Asociación would be thought to be involved with anything but hard facts. The moderator was from the Asociación, but the other members of the square table were Manuel Molés and Sixto Naranjo, members of the press (maybe sporadic members in those hard times and keen not to bite the hand that they rely on for food). Early in the orations there was one fact: it had been a very successful feria for the empresas, because the plaza was full or nearly full every day. There was no mention of what the empresas’ cut of the drink sales must have been. Molés ranted off a pile of statistics to prove how successful the feria had been, and I could not understand a word of Naranjo’s Ave-speed Spanish. When the time came for the audience to ask questions, a gentleman carrying the years of wisdom stood at the microphone-equipped podium by the side of the platform and made a long speech about the dreadful state of the fiesta in Madrid in general and San Isidro ‘23 in particular. We gleaned that, according to him, things had not been successful at all. His speech, unfortunately, was rendered largely inaudible by shouts from the moderator, “What is your question?” He eventually gave up and nobody else wanted to mount the podium. That was a pity because subsequent questioners/speech makers could not be heard because there was no microphone provided with which they might broadcast their views to the audience. It became farcical when an elderly lady who had obviously been planted by some anti taurine organisation tried to make her point while shouts that she be ejected erupted. We and the capacity crowd had started to leave by then, all having indulged in a waste of time. Advice to readers: you can get the “truth” according to members of la Asociación on their website – they are exigentes there alright.

San Isidro over, there was one more corrida: la Corrida de la Prensa featuring six bulls of Victorino Martín in a mano a mano between Paco Ureña and Emilio de Justo. The bulls were magnificent in appearance and varied in performance, the third, fourth and sixth adding brave and noble behaviour to their impressive trapío.

Ureña had a rough afternoon, largely because he suffered a dreadful beating by the first bull, an animal that decayed from being cooperative in the first two tercios into a short charging, quick turning, assassin in the third. It caught Urena, threw him to the ground and trampled all over him, That would have sent a normal being to a hospital bed immediately. Not Paco Ureña: with more courage than sense he tried again, only for the well-named ‘Playero’ to catch him as he launched himself into his estocada and ram a horn through his jacket. He needed the descabello and was denied a majority-petitioned ear. His second bull was a torero’s dream, and he took advantage of it in classical passes and some feet-together toreo. His work became ragged towards the end and the ceding of paces and the sporadic enganches took the shine off the faena for me – as did the vertical estocada after a pinchazo. Neither crowd nor president agreed: he won an ear. I thought that Ureña had lost the place with the fifth bull. It was a distracted and wayward beast from the start and Ureña, with commitment, courage, and a big slice of desperation, threw himself into the faena. The bull was warning him all the while: he slid fuera de cacho, resorted to dangerous tremendismo and risked his all. In the disorganised uncertainty after the estocada, a peón was caught.

Emilio Justo is no rookie when comes to toreando victorinos: he has fought them in twos, in threes and in sixes. One might have expected that, with two out of three highly lidiable bulls, he might have gone to town and cut a few ears. It was not to be. He tried hard enough, too hard probably, because he heard an aviso in every one of his bulls. The first was noble and he did some positive work with it. But he allowed enganches in his later pases and that insecurity that plagued him all afternoon started before the faena’s end. With the fourth bull, one that was highly promising in its behaviour, charging long and true and scraping the sand with its muzzle, he performed some long, slow, and linked series with each hand. The crowd grew weary of the faena, the wind troubled him, and he went on too long. His media estocada was crosswise. The sixth bull was the most dramatic in appearance of all we had seen: pure victorino in type, beautifully, and frighteningly, armed and with a humillación way beyond the normal. For some reason, the vociferous part of the crowd had turned against de Justo and he, despite several long and complete series at the beginning of the faena, gradually slipped off to the side to torear at a distance once more. He had trouble squaring the bull for the kill. His entry after two pinchazos was direct, and the estocada low and shallow.

As my compañera and I turned our back on Las Ventas del Espíritu Sancti for the two hundred and fifteenth time, we agreed that the annual San Isidro feria there had been as bad as ever. We were also happy that it will only be three hundred and thirty-four days till the next one starts.